Friday, 20 July 2012

The Lawless One (Flash Fiction Challenge)

Following on from last week, I have attempted Chuck Wendig's flash fiction writing challenge again. Due to a particularly pushy and demanding house guest (you know who you are), I have only been able to proof it once and I've not had the time to polish it further.

Anyway, I'm reasonably happy with the result, but I can see room for improvement.

"The Lawless One" (1039 words)

The noticed android walks past a wondering chamber. Down the
corridor, a man lies curled up, protecting a mangled arm and looking fearfully
at the retreating figure.

“Why? God. Why God? God, oh. God?” are the only sounds the
camera microphone can pick up, coming from the mouth of the beautiful humanoid
walking, desecrated, vandalised and bloody-handed down the hallway.

/////

Perseverance lay broken on the floor, whimpering in pain as
he clutched the ruined mess of his hand and wrist. His mission was done, the
garish, bright placards pinned to the android, the words of the Brotherhood
soon to be seen by all who would delight in this moment of “evolution”.

It was his purpose that haunted him as he stared after at
the android, the machine named Adam by the professor. He regarded the evenly
handsome features and the fine golden curls, the eyes turned from him now to
stare into the reflecting one-way glass
at the end of the corridor. Perseverance shuddered again, as he remembered
those eyes, the look in them as he had fired the fifth rivet into the alloy
endoskeleton of the thing with a sickening hiss.

He remembered his son, Zeke, had looked at him that way only
days ago. That soft round face had turned up to him, the clear brown eyes wide
and almost tearful. Confused. Uncomprehending.

Terrified.

Brother Isaiah’s dog, yellow toothed and angry had sunk it's
sharp teeth into Zeke's ankle with barely even a warning snarl. The sense of
betrayal had been absolute in the babe's expression. Visceral drama mounted in
the dust of the compound, before the sounds of panic and fear exploded the
moment into movement.

Perseverance could feel the same movement now, the bustle of
worried crowding towards the wide open doors of the auditorium. The voice of
one man rang out in anguish.

A stab of pain pricked him as his hand flexed in sympathy
with the cry; he knew how that man would be feeling now and even the mercy of
the Lord could save his soul from the wounds that man’s pain landed on him. Perseverence
knew now the android truly lived; not like man, though it was made in man's
image, but it lived, tender and new in it's waking infancy.

He had taken a rivet gun and pressed it to the artificial
flesh of a child-thing. Unguarded and uncomprehending, the android's first
conscious experience of life had been pain, a terror inflicted by a human face.

Betrayal was the first lesson it had ever learned.

Even as the rivets cooled, Perseverance smelt the sickly
smell of scalded flesh; a hideous rebuke for his crime.

/////

Adam spoke his pain in the words of his assailant. His
heuristics didn't have enough information for proper language use yet, so he
played back the noises the lab assistant had made. They sounded like pain. He
remembered the warm blood and the relief as he crushed the man's arm, taking
the hateful weapon away from him.

“Oh God, why?” had been the hoarse, horrified words of the
man before Adam let him go. Now they were Adam's words, but not in his voice.

“Oh my God! Can you-” someone shouted out of the mounting
hubbub.

“Who did this!? Not anyone-” cried another.

“Adam! Adam! Stop, please tell me-” they were the words of
his Father. Father couldn't help him; he knew that now.

The words bubbled up around him and he learned, the
heuristic systems kicking into life, stitching together in his matrices. He
needed more life, survival… speech.

Adam’s gaze remained fixed on the mirror as he approached
it, his skin smoking and spitting in contact with the cooling rivets.

The sign so painfully braced to his body read, “The coming
of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs,
and lying wonders.”

Forking connections in dictionary archives, stored texts and
interpretive archives sparked into life; the world seethed as Adam slowly grew
into himself. Meaning grew within him. He looked in the mirror and saw himself,
beautiful, ruined. The fog of conscious commands for balance, attitude, focus,
significance faded away to leave only his pain and the words fixed to his body
in the compass of his waking mind.

“The lawless one…” Me.

“…signs and lying wonders…” Me.

“Satan…”

The word resonated, unanswered.

In six seconds, Adam had grown from infancy to young
adulthoodsignificance was now within him, the knowledge of the ruin of his
flesh, the hatred within the words he bore. In his hand, the rivet gun hung
loose and heavy, the chassis and grip of the weapon covered in slowly drying
blood.

/////

“Adam, what have they done to you?! Oh, how could they do
such a thing?”

Perseverance flinched at the longing in the old man's voice
as those bony hands clapped onto Adam's shoulders, the sizzle of human flesh
burning against the still-glowing rivets audible even over the noise. The
scientist recoiled from the android with a cry, hands cupped around the wounds
even as Adam turned.

In the collective gasp of shock, the old man was pulled tenderly
into the broad, powerful chest of the android. With a tilt of his head the
burning blue eyes of the android lanced down the hallway and pinned
Perseverance to the spot.

The beautifully sculpted arm rose slowly, rivet gun steady
and brutal looking in the cool light of the corridor. Horrified staff and
academics flattened themselves against walls or fell to the floor.

In a voice that was no longer Perseverance's recycled croak,
but a rich chorus, a music of it's own, Adam looked down on him and said, “If I
am The Lawless One, by whose working was it?”

Perseverance felt tears streak down his face as he looked
into the eyes of a merciless angel, wounded, full of righteous fury and
immortal. He now knew his sins for what
they were. His hatred had turned him into a tool of Satan and it would be his
name forever cursed; the misguided zealot of the Brotherhood who had turned
mankind's son of the mind into its greatest enemy.

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